Downstate Medical Center College of Nursing Clinical Associate Profs. Sheryl Zang and Natasha Nurse teamed up with David Jones, director of Family Support Services for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, to help nearly a dozen new noncustodial fathers ages 16 to 24 learn how to parent.

The motivation was simple.

"We wanted to present a program to a population whose needs were not being met," Zang said. "There are a lot of programs for teen mothers. We thought that in order to get teen fathers more involved with their children, we needed to come together with some form of education for them."

Research took them to Jones, who created and has coordinated the Fathers First program in Far Rockaway, Queens, for Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) since 1997.

"It was based on my observations of our community," Jones said. "I saw a lot of children with no positive male role models. The fathers were sort of present, but absent from the children's homes."

Jones said he discovered fairly quickly in Far Rockaway that education was a means of increasing an absent father's involvement in a child's life.

"There is very strong judgement about teenagers to begin with," Jones said. "They need a tremendous amount of support about learning how to take care of a newborn. It is so easy for a young father to run away from that responsibility when you have not had positive role models in your life."

Zang, her students and Jones created the Bronx Fatherhood Program, a week-long program that ran 10 fathers through a gamut of basic baby and motherhood information last spring.

"So when Sheryl approached us," Jones said, "it was a perfect fit."

"We did not want to reinvent the wheel," Zang said. "These were young men who already had an interest in fatherhood and wanted to be the best they could be."

The program covered everything from nutrition to Lamaze childbirth. Dads were taught, for example, that giving an expectant woman a baked potato was better for her than a bag of potato chips.

"We presented a program that taught them about changes in the fetus, changes in the mother, labor and delivery, newborn and other anticipatory guidance," Zang said.

"The idea is that even if they don't bring money to the table, and they don't bring education and they don't bring a relationship, at least they can bring something to the baby."

Jones said health-care facilities, educational settings such as primary, secondary and high schools, and social service programs "are really conducive to dealing with the female population. They were neither flexible or fluid in dealing with the male population.

"It was really hard, because when you are teaching parental skills and they don't have the physical custody of the child, we have to sometimes set up supervised visitation, and sometimes even interact with the courts to get them visitation.

"But the information is essential, because when they do interact with their child, they have some competency," he said.

"We want these fathers to be a physical part of their children's lives," Zang said.

The group is seeking funding to hold more classes. For information, see the Web site at www.VNSNY.org.